[Part One of the Goodmans' story ran last week] [Pauline] NowEsther Moscow! She was relocation director for the city. [Bernard] Esther was throwing all these old people out of their homes. [Pauline] One day I said, "Where does this Esther live?" Rent-regulated, tax-abated Stuyvesant Town! She had the best of everything. [Bernard] Once she allowed people's relocations, old people lost their doctors, their friends; they died. [Pauline] Our landlord here got relocation orders for everyone in our building so he could "renovate." We went to look at the apartments in the Bronx where they were relocating people. [Bernard] We were horrifiedrats, roaches. [Pauline] We decided to do a big job on Esther. We picketed her out of her skin. Everybody came from all over the city. [Bernard] I want to emphasize [Pauline] Don't cut me off. Bernie has a tendency to cut me off. Bernie organized the tenants. It was great. Oh, go ahead, describe your organization. [Bernard] In this continuous battle, we realized there were 4 million people in New York who paid rent. They should be masters in their own house. Koch was congressman at the time. We told him tenants were getting a terrible deal. He said, "That's not my field. I'm on the House Banking Committee." We stormed out of his office. We organized the Tenants Party, a party no tenant could resist, for reinstatement of rent control, rollback on rents. They ran me against Koch in the congressional race. We got 6000 signatures. We presented them to [Pauline] You know who? David Dinkins. [Bernard] Dinkins looked at us and sneered. [Pauline] Could I cut in? Dinkins worked under Koch. [Bernard] Dinkins said, "You'll never be on the ballot." Two weeks later, Koch challenged our signatures. The Village Voice arranged a debate. I debated Koch directly. [Pauline] It was very powerful. Jack Newfield was there. But then Koch found Josie, the little old lady in front of the supermarket. She'd witnessed our petitions. [Bernard] Koch found out she'd been gerrymandered out of our district, and I was knocked off the ballot. [Pauline] What a job! [Bernard] We wanted to go to the feds to get some justice.

Meanwhile. [Pauline] Mickey Schwartz, our landlord's lawyer, kept giving us eviction notices. He actually told someone down the street he couldn't take this case anymore because Bernard Goodman was driving him crazy. [Bernard] I used to organize tenants from one end of the city to the other. [Pauline] One night, Bernie had a meeting. I said, "Bernie, I have a feeling they're going to harass the older people." I'm outside the place. Here come these Fearless Fosdicks, two characters, walking in the building. I start blowing a whistle. I really made a big fuss. [Bernard] They were thugs. They started running down the street. People surrounded their taxi, pushing it back and forth.

photo: Jay Muhlin

Bernard and Pauline Goodman in their Stuyvesant Square walk-up

We never got to the paint-box part. How you bought Bernie one for his 80th birthday, and now he has shows everywhere. Anyway . . . [Pauline] Housing shouldn't be part of the profit system. [Bernard] Housing expenses should be on the sliding scale. The city has buildings that could be turned into co-ops. If people owned their housing, they'd take care of it.

Have you formally retired from the struggle or are you still dabbling? [Pauline] We can't stand it anymore. When we took this building over, we were so busy renovating. Bernie put in 36 sets of windowswith his own hands. Then we were up to here in the civil rights movement. Now we're waiting for the young people. But there's a new generation called yuppies leaving social questions behind them. [Bernard] No, they are acting out of their economic status, not greed. If times are good, you get the selfish. [Pauline] No, young people todayBernie, let me finish!